it. Somehow I’d beat it.
Trains or planes are dull, but putting to sea! Any ship, great or small, casting her ropes and pulling away from land has aboard the thrill of setting out, anticipation, perhaps adventure, leaving an old world, seeking a new. It coursed through me. Glorying to prospects I knew not, I stood on the upper deck and let a driving wind whipping my face carve the future.
Our dipping bows cut through the oncoming swell, hurled aside rhythmic sheets in fascinating cascades of light. The great sea, the ferocious sea, drowning, playing, pounding, singing. Don’t say it had no thought, nor its motion lacked an embracing feel. Rainbows shone in its spray, children of the sun, yellow red and green, in splendour the dark marine. Beside us sailed masters of the gale, gliding along each trough, tipping the surface, banking with the ease of upward sweep until they crossed the breaking tops of a world so dangerous and immense.
Away to the north a fishing boat was flinging spray, her bows gleaming broke each crest. Men on the winches handling nets, skipper at helm judging wind and weather, real men. Watching turned into craving. I’ll be part of this world of ‘doing’ Find a practical life, outdoors each day, live with the sun, the healing sun.
Hilltops grew from the sea, turned to islands, long and sleek, dark as a seal’s back. Travel the world here the tendrils that bound me were imprinted in the blood. How else their power to sway? Tears came, blinding and unashamed. Why, why? What were these shores to me?
Wave tops flecked with white, rocks and breaking swell. Ancient limbs reached into the sea, primal land to sky without bounds. No insipid shades- sounds and colour, strong and pure, vibrant as the energy of places wild which face the rolling sea. No weakness now would hold me back.
All doubts fled, a rough existence would be the making of me. Away with security, no conformity, my own master come what may, trim sail to gale, the fickle moods of sea, ride storm and danger; face the doom of Nordic myth, what will be, will be . The spirit of Viking days gripped my imagination, a psychic force driving my actions; the fatal power that bends us to its ends.
The island closed, ahead the pillard light. Skerries dark, white edged with the rising tide. A wild bird’s flight.black winged against the sea. The helm swung sharp a-starboard, turned the headland close. Beaches shelved to turquoise, a bay, a castle, sea girt on a rock and straggled crofts beneath a snaring peak. I stared in disbelief.
One island hill stood clear against the blue. Sunshine faded into night. I heard a new born cry upon an ice moon hill. A shadowed crone sat amid the frozen needles beneath a winter larch, till smiling through her dying groan she watched the raven galley sail to seek a freedom home.
What force unravelled time and place, stirred imprinted memory?
Though a thousand years had passed,
Yet beat the pulse of true affinity.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hilda
The image faded as the ferry manoeuvered alongside. It left me deeply concerned by these repeated glimpses of past events. Did they somehow emerge from a cosmic interface where past, present and future exist locked together as an indestructible wavelength imprinted on the process of particle annihilation and recreation. After all wavelengths form our reality, must reach into the neural connections between our brain cells. The hypothesis of parallel universes has been suggested, why not a form of parallel consciousness?
Outlandish speculation, I shook it off by concentrating on first impressions. Some of the folk in the saloon had conversed in Gaelic, their rising and falling voices reminding me of the few Irish I knew. A surprising contrast to the strident tones I’d left behind fighting the decibels of a different culture often harsh and loud with assertive conversation. Other contrasts stood out voices apart, facial and in their manner, the gulf appeared vastly wider than that
Trains or planes are dull, but putting to sea! Any ship, great or small, casting her ropes and pulling away from land has aboard the thrill of setting out, anticipation, perhaps adventure, leaving an old world, seeking a new. It coursed through me. Glorying to prospects I knew not, I stood on the upper deck and let a driving wind whipping my face carve the future.
Our dipping bows cut through the oncoming swell, hurled aside rhythmic sheets in fascinating cascades of light. The great sea, the ferocious sea, drowning, playing, pounding, singing. Don’t say it had no thought, nor its motion lacked an embracing feel. Rainbows shone in its spray, children of the sun, yellow red and green, in splendour the dark marine. Beside us sailed masters of the gale, gliding along each trough, tipping the surface, banking with the ease of upward sweep until they crossed the breaking tops of a world so dangerous and immense.
Away to the north a fishing boat was flinging spray, her bows gleaming broke each crest. Men on the winches handling nets, skipper at helm judging wind and weather, real men. Watching turned into craving. I’ll be part of this world of ‘doing’ Find a practical life, outdoors each day, live with the sun, the healing sun.
Hilltops grew from the sea, turned to islands, long and sleek, dark as a seal’s back. Travel the world here the tendrils that bound me were imprinted in the blood. How else their power to sway? Tears came, blinding and unashamed. Why, why? What were these shores to me?
Wave tops flecked with white, rocks and breaking swell. Ancient limbs reached into the sea, primal land to sky without bounds. No insipid shades- sounds and colour, strong and pure, vibrant as the energy of places wild which face the rolling sea. No weakness now would hold me back.
All doubts fled, a rough existence would be the making of me. Away with security, no conformity, my own master come what may, trim sail to gale, the fickle moods of sea, ride storm and danger; face the doom of Nordic myth, what will be, will be . The spirit of Viking days gripped my imagination, a psychic force driving my actions; the fatal power that bends us to its ends.
The island closed, ahead the pillard light. Skerries dark, white edged with the rising tide. A wild bird’s flight.black winged against the sea. The helm swung sharp a-starboard, turned the headland close. Beaches shelved to turquoise, a bay, a castle, sea girt on a rock and straggled crofts beneath a snaring peak. I stared in disbelief.
One island hill stood clear against the blue. Sunshine faded into night. I heard a new born cry upon an ice moon hill. A shadowed crone sat amid the frozen needles beneath a winter larch, till smiling through her dying groan she watched the raven galley sail to seek a freedom home.
What force unravelled time and place, stirred imprinted memory?
Though a thousand years had passed,
Yet beat the pulse of true affinity.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hilda
The image faded as the ferry manoeuvered alongside. It left me deeply concerned by these repeated glimpses of past events. Did they somehow emerge from a cosmic interface where past, present and future exist locked together as an indestructible wavelength imprinted on the process of particle annihilation and recreation. After all wavelengths form our reality, must reach into the neural connections between our brain cells. The hypothesis of parallel universes has been suggested, why not a form of parallel consciousness?
Outlandish speculation, I shook it off by concentrating on first impressions. Some of the folk in the saloon had conversed in Gaelic, their rising and falling voices reminding me of the few Irish I knew. A surprising contrast to the strident tones I’d left behind fighting the decibels of a different culture often harsh and loud with assertive conversation. Other contrasts stood out voices apart, facial and in their manner, the gulf appeared vastly wider than that
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